Candidates Ready For Negative Campaigning

Virginia's voters will start to hear more about what's wrong with the men who want to be the Republican candidate for governor, and they'll be hearing it from the candidates themselves.

A new poll shows the gap is narrowing between front-runner Paul S. Trible Jr. and his two opponents, J. Marshall Coleman and Stanford E. Parris. That will lead to a barrage of anti-Trible campaigning in the weeks remaining before the June 13 primary, candidates and political observers said.

"The differences between them are not all that significant on important issues," said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. "Coleman and Parris have to distinguish themselves from Trible."

But while that may help grab voter attention for individual candidates in the short run, it could cause problems for the party in the fall election when it'll need unity to defeat the all-but-official Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, Rozell said.

Trible now leads the race by 16 percentage points, about half of what his lead was in January, according to a poll conducted by the Maryland-based Mason-Dixon Opinion Research Inc.

Of 824 voters polled who were likely to vote in the first Republican primary in about 40 years, 38 percent said they would vote for Trible. Twenty-three percent favored Parris and 22 percent liked Coleman, according to the poll.

But the poll also showed the support is "soft," meaning can didates are not necessarily able to count on it being there June 13. Just 31 percent of Trible's supporters said they were "certain" to vote for him, while Parris had 37 percent and Coleman 25 percent.

The numbers indicate that all three have a fighting chance at the nomination, so the candidates, who sound very much alike on key issues, must find a way to separate themselves from the others and capture voter attention. One of the most effective ways to do that, observers say, is negative campaigning.

"We are now ready for the attack," said John McGlennon, a political science professor at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and chairman of 1st District Democrats.

"Trible's support has been dropping consistently, ... and he has been slowly bleeding," McGlennon said. "Now Coleman and Parris have to create a hemorrhage."

Parris said earlier this week that he would be running "comparative ads" that would show how he differs from Trible, a man he and Coleman have characterized as a quitter because he did not defend his Senate seat against former Gov. Charles S. Robb. Another subject of the ads could be the Iran-Contra hearings and what Parris described as Trible's lack of leadership in the investigation of Oliver North.

Coleman's campaign has similar plans. "I think it's safe to say that you'll see some ads that contrast our position with Paul Trible's," said Coleman campaign spokesman Dennis Peterson.

The attacks on Trible are hardly new to the campaign. Coleman, in particular, has been on the offensive during much of the campaign, with Parris jumping in in recent weeks and leading the attack during the last of the gubernatorial debates Wednesday night.

Trible spokesman John Miller said Trible will be running issue-oriented ads.

"Over the past six or seven weeks my opponents have outspent me 4-to-1 on radio, television and direct mail, and they are still 16 points behind," Trible said in the statement. "From this point on, our margin will increase."

Coleman and Parris, in addition to taking on Trible, have thrown punches at each other during the gubernatorial debates. Parris' campaign is maintaining that Coleman is no longer in the race.

"From our perspective, it's down to a two-man race," said Parris spokesman Bruce Hildebrand. "Marshall has not been able to create momentum."

Coleman has criticized Parris - as well as Trible - for having spent most of his political career with the federal government and lacking experience in Richmond.

But while the negative campaigning could help individual candidates now, it could cause problems for the party in the fall election, according to Rozell.

In addition to dividing the party faithful, the primary campaign also will use up millions of dollars that could have been spent in the fall and could make it difficult for the nominee to collect money later, Rozell said.

Coleman's spokesman doesn't agree. Peterson said the campaign attacks are on issues and public records and are not attempts at character assassination.Because of that, he said, Republicans will be able to come back together for the fall election.